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Nanotwin Governed Toughening Mechanism In Hierarchically Structured Materials, Sungwin Moon, Subin Lee, Jiwon Jeong, Minhyug Kwon, Sang Ho Oh, Sheng Yi

Nanomechanical Testing in Materials Research and Development V

As an important class of natural biocomposite materials, mollusk shells possess remarkable mechanical strength and toughness as a consequence of their hierarchical structuring of soft organic and hard mineral constituents through biomineralization. Strombus gigas, one of the toughest mollusk shell (99 wt% CaCO₃, 1 wt% organic), contains high density of nanoscale {110} growth twins in its third order lamellae, the basic building block of the material [1]. Although the existence of these nanotwins has been known for decades their roles and functions in mechanical behaviors and properties of biological materials are still unrevealed because numerous studies in recent …